Read Online Die-Off by Kirk Russell - Free Book Online

as if that made complete sense.
    ‘Anything else you’d like to tell us?’
    ‘One thing and that’s I won’t need a ride home. My brother-in-law is picking me up.’
    ‘Tell your brother-in-law we’ll have some follow-up questions.’
    Soliatano grinned as if Marquez had told a good joke, but said it was fine to call his cell and that he was up early every morning. Marquez called close to dawn the next morning and a recording said Soliatano’s cell phone was no longer in service. When he stopped by Soliatano’s house his black Honda was parked along the curb, but no one answered the door and the dog didn’t bark. He knocked again and waited and walked around and looked in a window on one side of the garage then saw a neighbor come out of his house across the street.
    ‘They left in the middle of the night,’ the neighbor said. ‘I hope it’s not a problem with the baby being premature. My wife is worried.’
    ‘I don’t think it’s the baby.’
    ‘Are you a friend of theirs?’
    ‘We just met but I’m hoping to see a lot more of him.’
    ‘I see.’
    Probably not, but that was okay. Marquez called Waller after he drove away.
    ‘Soliatano’s phone is disconnected and I’m just leaving his house. His wife’s van is gone and he told me she wasn’t driving anymore. The dog isn’t barking. The shades are down and a neighbor said they left in the middle of the night.’
    ‘It’s what the neighbor said, there’s a problem with the baby.’
    ‘I checked with the local hospitals. She’s not there. I think they’re gone. I’ve got the plates and a description of her car. I’m going to ask the highway patrol to watch for it.’
    ‘Good luck with that.’
    ‘We can’t lose track of this guy. We’ve got to find him.’
    ‘So he can lie through his teeth again?’
    We need him
, Marquez thought.
We need him to get to Hauser
.
    ‘Talk to you later,’ he said, and hung up.

ELEVEN
    T hat night a California Highway Patrol officer with the nickname ‘Lottery Lou’, having three times bought winning lottery tickets, was shopping for a new van with his wife at Hilltop Mall in Richmond. Today was the second day of a four-day Halloween sale at a dealership, and though the sales people looked weird in their costumes the prices were ‘slashed’ to where Lou knew they were competitive. He was ready to buy but what he couldn’t do was sit around and listen to a guy dressed up as a 1920s baseball player talk about Bluetooth features and the ‘capabilities’ of the car.
    He already knew the car was capable. He had written speeding tickets for a dozen of these vans, so he told Lisa he’d be right back. He was going around the corner to a gas station so he wouldn’t have to do it later.
    ‘You and slugger can go over how the radio works.’
    ‘I thought we were doing this together.’
    ‘We are.’
    He drove to a Chevron station and as he did he passed a store with a van sitting alone out along the outer edge, right where the lot ended and street lights didn’t quite reach. Something about it tickled at his memory though didn’t quite connect. He bought gas. He drove back but not in a hurry, figuring Lisa would be haggling, though the dealerships didn’t really haggle anymore and it was free money anyway. It was lottery money and all the crap about shopping for the right price was nothing more than going through the motions. She was going to get the car and get it tonight. She couldn’t bear having that much money just sitting in a Wells Fargo account unspent.
    He turned in and drove across the lot to the lonely green Sienna van he passed on the way to the gas station. Lottery Lou had a head for numbers. Strings of numbers and letters and license plates stuck with him. When he bought a lottery ticket he’d read the numbers to himself a couple of times and that was enough. If he heard it again he would remember, and he knew now as he studied the halfway-to-a-junkyard Sienna that these plates came